Tag Archives: Jim Rome

As a college student I think I know everything…or so Jim Rome told me when I get to hear his voice on the bus to campus every morning. Why the driver insists on listening to Rome every morning is beyond me, but he’s always good for one quote to stick with me the rest of the day. This week when discussing the Penn State scandal Rome had no problem enlightening us with facts on college students specifically that, “They think they know everything.” Well Jim, I do!

Recently I’ve discovered that my MGO 403 (Strategic Management) that I’ve mentioned before here has been one of the most informative classes I’ve taken at the University at Buffalo. This past week discussing small businesses we learned that small businesses in America make up for 60-80% of the employment spectrum.

Working for a small business, Crossroads Consulting, LLC, hearing that inspired me to do some more research and to see if I could uncover some more facts on the importance of small businesses in terms of employment. As a side note, our small business has just added three new team members to our team who I wanted to welcome aboard.

Here’s some small business statistics that you may not have known:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.
• Hire 43 percent of high tech workers ( scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Made up 97.5 percent of all identified exporters and produced 31 percent of export value in FY 2008.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau and Intl. Trade Admin.; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 (www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs299.pdf) and CHI Research, 2003 (www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs225.pdf);U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.